Summary
The application of the respirometric techniques is nowadays one of the latest innovations related to the research on the residual waters treatments. This sum of techniques let us analyze two important processes into a biological treatment plantÇ: the growth of the biomass and the consumption of the substrate. These two techniques become mighty tools to evaluate the biological treatment systems of residual waters.
The main purpose of this project is to carry out a application able to control how the six respirometers work taking care of a sample process of the respirometries and the analyze of the obtained information, to get the readily biodegradable growth (Ss) as residual water samples, and the maximum specific growth rate, of compost samples.
The application has been developed around the Microsoft Access, where we integrate the databases with the samples and the results of the respirometries, and the control forms which provide us of a satisfactory control and management of the samples processes to analyze. The application communicates with the sensors and actuators of the respirometers through the Active X control, ADS_OCX provided by TwinCAT, which allow us to capture the sensor readings and control the actuators. These elements are connected to decentralized inputs and outputs unit, connected by the Ethernet bus in the Industrial PC, where the application running.
The samples of the respirometries are correctly controlled, once the application is finished, registering the readings of the sensors to the database and controlling the signals of the respirometer’s valves. Thanks to the collected samples, or to the external respirometries, imported from Microsoft Excel, it has been possible to chech that Ss and the uH calculation effective.
By the developed application, we have been able to check the full working and the range of possibilities that the TwinCAT offers in response to the control of the inputs and outputs units, as well as its communication to the Microsoft Access applications. This can help to use these kinds of technology, for future applications.